A Question Of Habit

24 Ramadhan 1435

I've come to understand the extraordinary power of habit through the experience of fasting. This holy month requires the demolition of your usual routines, with the attendant realisation that so much of what we do is a form of sleep-walking: we're on automatic pilot more often than we realise. And then comes the understanding that fasting for an extended period itself requires the establishment of new routines simply to cope with this new set of demands.

Beyond that, however, comes the further realisation that to retreat into those habits, comfortable and comforting as they may be, might not be the best thing for the development of the virtues that fasting seeks to promote. And to retreat from the world would be to spurn the opportunities on offer, painful as those opportunities might be.

Simply put: it's better to be out and about, rubbing against the world's hard edges than hiding virtuously under the blankets. Better but harder. And very tiring.